Month: May 2016

Lots of industrial marketers are hopping on the inbound marketing for industrial bandwagon. Most are failing. Here are 5 reasons they fail.

Internal Passion:

The number one reason is lack of passion internally. By internal, I mean someone in your organization that is passionate about content or inbound marketing. That is not to say you cannot outsource your inbound marketing to an agency or consultant, but they must be as passionate about growing your business as they are about inbound marketing for lead generation. They have to be willing to get in the weeds with you and truly understand your industry & business.

Donald Trump is showing the way for industrial internet marketing with his disruptive way of communicating. Industrial marketers should take note and follow his lead.

Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is a major disruptor to the established, staid political process of old. Much in the same way Google has disrupted almost everything. (Do you still park your World Book encyclopedias on your shelves?)

Much in the same way Uber & Lyft are disrupting the taxi industry.

Much in the same way Amazon is continuing to dispute the entire retail & industrial supply industry.

Much in the same way inbound marketing is disrupting traditional marketing.

For inbound marketing for industrial and industrial lead generation, you can’t beat these 4 keyword tools.

I often get the question, “How do we decide on what keywords and associated content to create?” Also, I am asked, “What keyword tools do you use?”

My answer is always the same.

“As the most knowledgeable in your business, Mr. Business Owner, you are the very best keyword tool…by far”

With a dumb-founded look on Mr. Business Owner’s face, I continue.

You best keyword tool is the owner:

“Mr. Business Owner, you and your employees know the questions your prospects and customers will ask customer service…as well as Google. All we have to do is glean your companies’ & industries’ keywords from those questions and we will have a great list to work from.”

Industrial owners are mostly baby-boomers. Their industrial marketing strategies reflect a baby-boomer mindset that is out of sync with the new industrial buyer.

I have been working with a prominent B2B industrial manufacturer for years. The C-suite management is largely made up of baby-boomers, as defined by an age range of 51-70. All are talented individuals with specific skill sets; engineering, marketing, sales, etc. All have excellent people skills and I enjoy each of them.

To a point. Then…I get frustrated when I see so many decisions based on a baby-boomer mindset.

When it comes to leveraging the web into a coherent marketing strategy, they have made their decisions based on rust-belted, gut-dominated, well-meaning, baby-boomer assumptions. My analysis is not just based on my own experience, but also comes from real data from Google & Millward Brown Digital Research, one of the most respected digital research companies in the world.

I have seen poor marketing decisions based on assumptions born out of an age group simply not fluent in the digital landscape and market realities. My reference “case study” is not the only offender…I see the baby-boomer mindset making poor marketing decisions daily when it comes to digital.

As my dear ‘Ol Pappy use to say, “Son, you don’t even know, what you don’t know”. So it is with many baby-boomers.

Can inbound marketing for industrial lower industrial lead generation costs? You bet. Here is a strategic primer

Stay with me here, as there are several teachable moments for industrial marketers:

Those of you that know me and read this blog know that I am a certified HubSpot Partner and evangelist for inbound marketing for industrial.

It just works…if executed properly.

I spend a lot of time during a normal day perusing through the web to validate my enthusiasm for inbound marketing for industrial. I use lots to tools to consolidate information gathering such as Google News, Feedly, Yahoo Reader, etc. Of course, you can customize these services to feature the content that interests you the most. By far, my most productive app is Pocket. (www.getpocket.com) So… when I see an article that interests me I simply “Share” with Pocket and forget about it.

Then when I am ready to write a blog post, I go to my personalize Pocket page and find the reference material that I saved days or months ago, all neatly organize on one web page.

After looking at my keyword rankings recently, I wanted to bolster my rankings for “inbound marketing for industrial” (currently #11 in search rankings) and also thinking about the costs of “industrial lead generation” (currently #13 in search rankings).